While every company is unique and has its own story to tell, we've found that using the following sections provides potential supporters, backers, and investors with what they need to know to want to get involved.
Your Public Profile (view example) allows you to give your pitch and provide background information on your company and product. A well-composed public profile is a fantastic way to get your company in front of a large audience. Outside of the promise of a successful fundraise, clearly and publicly engaging your audience has a great deal of value. It gives you a chance to start a conversation that can help engage customers and grow your brand. You can edit your campaign profile at any time, both post-launch and of course, pre-launch.
The components in your public profile depend on whether you are doing an equity-based raise or a rewards-based raise, and we will go over the components of both fundraise types.
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Both Raise Types
- Company Information
- This is the first part of your profile, and it goes over your company's information, allows you to upload a cover photo, and product video
- Cover Photo: Every campaign has a cover photo for the campaign if a video is not included. This cover photo must be either a .png, a .jpeg, or a .jpg file, and it must be a maximum of 560px by 310px. We recommend providing a cover photo of exactly that size, for the highest-resolution and most professional looking photo possible for your campaign
- Pitch Video: A short, descriptive explanation of your idea and an introduction of the company Founders. A pitch video isn't required, but can greatly enhance the efficacy of a fundraising campaign. Sometimes due to file size videos are not able to load on the site, making the best way to get your video up and running is to use embedded code. This is done by hosting your video on YouTube or Vimeo and then copying the embed code onto your public profile. We recommend Vimeo due to its higher video quality
- Fundraise Terms
- This covers the information covered in the Rewards and Equity Details section of the knowledge base. If you're running a rewards-based campaign, this is where you pick the rewards and their quantities, add descriptions for them and set a fundraise goal and duration. We highly recommend reading through Rewards and Equity Details so that you have a complete understanding of how to choose a good fundraise goal and duration, as well for rewards campaigns to have a good understanding of rewards and what types of rewards are best for which campaigns
- Rewards-Campaigns: If you have a reward that you want to ship to backers, please select to collect mailing addresses. If you fail to select this and the campaign has started, you will have to manually email every backer and request shipping information, which takes a couple weeks and significantly delays you in fulfilling the rewards you offered to backers, creating a bad start for your backer-company relationship
- Public Profile
- This is the section where you include all photographs and text that will go in the body of the campaign. You want to make sure to break up the body of the pitch with photographs and media, to keep readers interested in your campaign.
- The Parts:
- Elevator Pitch: The first paragraph of content is typically your Elevator Pitch. This describes the problem your product solves, how you solve it and the size of the market that your problem addresses
- You can read more about how to craft a great pitch in the article in this section titled "How do I make a great pitch?"
- Product Overview: A detailed explanation of what your product is, how it works, and why people would want to see it brought to market. This would include an explanation of how it works and any data you have on its effectiveness or its market demand. In some rewards-based cases you may be offering a pre-order of the product, so remember — you're "selling" the product as much as explaining it
- The Ask: Once you've pitched your product idea, the next step is to explain how much capital you are raising and explain what you will use the funds to accomplish. The amount you are raising only makes sense if you can provide a clear use of funds that convince backers that their support will translate to reaching an important milestone. Backers will not back if they have no idea what their money is going towards
- FAQ: The last part of your profile should include answers to some frequently asked questions about your fundraise campaign, your product, and the likelihood that you will achieve your goals. What to include in this section will become more clear as your campaign continues, and you can always come back and edit this section after your campaign goes live
- Elevator Pitch: The first paragraph of content is typically your Elevator Pitch. This describes the problem your product solves, how you solve it and the size of the market that your problem addresses
- Tools and elements you can use in your profile:
- Photographs: You can use a photograph at any point in the body of your profile, and it is highly recommended you do so. The up arrow in the profile builder is the upload button for photos. The higher the resolution of the photo, the better it is for the campaign
- iFrame: A tool that allows you to display part of another website on your profile. This is useful if you want to display unique elements, such as a slider displaying all products/services, or an interactive chart showing the effectiveness of your product or service
- Preview and Launch
- This is where you will manage your campaign after launch. You are able to view all comments on your campaign, give periodical updates to the campaign, and view who has backed your campaign or committed investment money to it
- Comments: This is where people who pledged to your campaign can comment on it. If you are eager to see comments, ask backers to leave a comment about the campaign after they back, with thoughts, constructive criticism, or support!
- Updates: This is where you update people in the campaign through the fundraise's duration. Leaving updates whenever you get press, a significant amount of backers, or anything you might put in social media is key to having a successful campaign; backers and investors want to see that the entrepreneurs are invested in their campaign and their company 100%, and consistent updates help communicate this
- Backers: This is just a list of people who have backed your campaign or pledged investment money to it. This allows you to see who has and hasn't backed, and follow up with people who have not yet backed
Equity-Based Campaigns
- Business Plan
- This is the section that goes over your business documents, and reports on the state of your company to potential investors. If you are generally soliciting, people who see this section of your campaign will have to be verified as Accredited Investors. For more information, read "What is General Soliciting?" under Marketing Your Fundraise
- We go over in detail all of the elements of the business plan you need to provide in "I'm doing an equity fundraise - what do I need to provide?" under Rewards & Equity Details, but the business plan section is structured similarly to your profile. You have the same tools available, such as photos, iFrames and audio clips, and should use them in a graceful way in your business plan. Business plans are a little more rigid, so media should be less frequent and more graceful, and can add more than a wall-of-text business plan would.
Here is a video going over how to construct the business plan section for an Equity fundraise: